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The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) is engaged in an ongoing investigation into whether or not the Nintendo Joy-Con drift issue is significant enough to warrant consumer action.
Joy-Cons are the default controllers that come with the Nintendo Switch, a pair of independent controllers with four face buttons and an analog stick. Many players have reported that these analog sticks have failed to accurately register directional inputs within just two years.
How prevalent is Joy-Con drift on the Nintendo Switch?
As part of the BEUC’s investigation, they have been soliciting testimony from Nintendo Switch owners about their own experiences with Joy-Con drift. According to their findings, as many as 88% of Nintendo Switch owners have experienced Joy-Con drift.
This number is so high that it is likely the BEUC will find some way to hold Nintendo responsible for this critical hardware failure. According to the BEUC’s own wording, this constitutes “premature obsolescence and misleading omissions of key consumer information.”
“Consumers assume the products they buy to last an appropriate amount of time according to justified expectations, not to have to pay for expensive replacements due to a technical defect. Nintendo must now come up with proper solutions for the thousands of consumers affected by this problem.” - BEUC Director General Monique Goyens
How will EU consumer protections affect non-EU consumers?
Those living in the EU need only wait for the BEUC to conclude its case against Nintendo to figure out what they need to do. However, for those who are not citizens of the European Union, either due to residing outside of Europe or due to government actions which have left them newly separated from the European community, these rulings can still be useful.
Perhaps the most important part of this ruling is its potential to set global precedent. Other countries with their own class-action lawsuits or regulatory bodies may look to the European Union to decide what action should be taken by their own similar organizations.
Additionally, it’s not likely that Nintendo will be able to provide a geographically locked solution to the Joy-Con issues, and whatever way they choose to address this, will likely benefit Switch owners everywhere.
Whether this means establishing a replacement program, working on a new Joy-Con which doesn’t have the drift issues, or releasing the IP to allow third party entities to repair or produce higher quality Joy-Cons of their own, remains to be seen.
